Coulthard: 'I won't give up'

'I haven't had this before and I have experienced almost everything else,' he said after a run of luck for the last 18 months that is difficult to believe.

'I am not going to give up, I am going to fight on,' he said. 'Its early days in the championship and things can easily turn around.'

'Saying I am disappointed is an understatement but all I can do is take the positives from the weekend. Given all the circumstances I still believe in myself and still believe I am doing a good job and I think I was driving a good race. I didn't want to lose a place at the start but having done that I didn't want to be caught out right up Eddie's chuff and crash into the back of him.

'I want the race to settle down and let it, hopefully, come to me. Michael was half a minute down the road but things were on the right track for me. I started to have a gear selection problem and the team tried to put it right which left me giving it wide eyes for a few laps because the problem made the car jump forward every time I changed gear.'

Like Mika Hakkinen his race was a battle from the beginning after he failed to make as good a start and Irvine took third by Sainte devote, the first bend.

'I didn't make a bad start but Eddie made a better one. Obviously he had lighter fuel as well. I don't like being burnt off the line but they clearly have better mechanical traction than we do.'